“His spirit. Yes.”
Gancanagh, says Cernunnos suddenly in my head.
“Gancanagh?” I repeat aloud. “What is that?”
Heathcliff twists around, staring at me with alarm. “What did you say?”
“It’s not me saying it, it’shim, Cernunnos. He just said ‘gancanagh’ out of the blue. What does that mean?”
“Love-talker,” say Heathcliff and Edgar at the same time. And then Heathcliff says, “Oh shit,” and Edgar’s expression shifts to oneof realization and horror.
“Gancanagh,” Heathcliff says, rising. “That’s what Ian is. The Love-Talker who can convince people to do his will. And he’s a púca, too, a shifter. Some kind of hybrid of the two. Shit, I gotta call Meemaw.”
“Meemaw?” I ask.
“Yeah, she’s one of the Coosaw Lockwoods, the family expert on all the old stories. I’ll get my phone from the truck and call outside—her hearing is uncanny for a ninety-year-old lady, and if she hears anyone she doesn’t recognize in the background, she won’t talk to me.”
He jogs out of the sanctuary, and I pace in circles around Edgar’s chair, wishing I had my phone to look stuff up.
The sex calmed my restlessness a bit, but the discomfort is starting to resurface. Other than the word gancanagh, Cernunnos has been quiet, but it’s not the reassuring kind of quiet. It’s the busy kind of quiet accompanied by weird pulses of energy throughout my body and vibrations in my bones. I get the feeling that he’s learning me, adjusting, settling in…maybe evenchangingme, deep inside, where I can’t see or stop it.
“Where did you go?” Edgar asks.
I pause and frown at him. He’s looking at me with desperate curiosity.
“When you died,” he clarifies. “Where did you go? Did you see anything?”
“You mean heaven or hell?”
He nods, fear and eagerness warring in his eyes.
“I didn’t see either of those places,” I say slowly. “I don’t know if they exist. I was in a great void, right on the edge of this maze of crystals or mirrors… It went on forever, as high and as low as Icould see, and just as far in both directions. Maybe beyond the part I saw, there’s more to it. Some final resting place. But no…I didn’t see heaven or hell.”
Edgar’s face crumples for a second, then hardens. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying just to upset me because you’re angry. And you have every right to be angry, but lying to someone about the afterlife is…well, it’s beneath you, Cathy. Although after what I saw you two doing on this platform, maybe nothing is beneath you.”
I’m about to tell him that he’s fuckingrightI’m angry, and several other things, but suddenly I’m turning away from him. Descending the steps, heading down the aisle.
Why am I going this way? What’s happening right now? When did I make the very mature decision to end the conversation with Edgar and leave him to wallow in his crisis of faith?
I didn’t make any such decision. Nor do I understand why I’m walking down the aisle with such purpose, as if…
Oh shit.
I’m not in control of this. Someone else is steering me. It’s like being in the driver’s seat of a car, but your passenger has reached over and grabbed the wheel.
Frantically, I struggle against the pressure of the god’s will. But he has grown stronger.
Relent, child, he says.I let you have your moment with the boy. Now you must yield, while I reshape your flesh to suit my needs and wishes.
“No!” I grab one of the pews, halting my progress along the aisle. I cling there, straining against the urge to stand up and walk out of the church. “Why do you want to leave?” I pant. “I thought you wanted revenge on the congregation who held you down forso long.”
I do.
“Well, this is the best place to get that revenge.” Sweat breaks out on my forehead, and a hollow chill traces along my spine and legs. “We’ll get Edgar to call everyone here for a meeting, and then you can…reveal yourself.”
The pressure eases a bit.How will he summon them?
“He can call, text, email—lots of options.”
